


punctilio

by perennials



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, author is unsure where kuroo is and improvised
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:09:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23378164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/pseuds/perennials
Summary: The boy you've loved since you were fifteen stands in your apartment and watches you make dinner.
Relationships: Kuroo Tetsurou/Tsukishima Kei
Comments: 9
Kudos: 161
Collections: Valentine's Day Lockers 2020





	punctilio

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mellohis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mellohis/gifts).



If they were all put on this earth for a reason, then clearly he’s been left out of the loop. Kei turns this morbid idea over in his head as, across the counter, Kuroo Tetsurou dips his fingers into the mayonnaise saucer.

“What,” Kuroo asks around his knuckle.

“Nothing, I just,” Kei stares blankly at the mayonnaise bottle. “I was wondering why I let you into my apartment.”

Kuroo shrugs. “Easy. You missed me.”

Had this exchange occurred seven years ago in the third gymnasium of Shinzen High, Kei would have walked out on him. Kuroo might not have even been capable of producing such a line, being eighteen and harebrained and obsessed with fractional distillation. They would have been standing on the steps leading up to the gym, or the side of the cafeteria. The cherry blossoms would be blooming out of season. Missed who, Kei would have said sharply, hiding his embarrassment behind his glasses behind his fear.

Today his new apartment has a kitchen fitted with a marble countertop. From the living room balcony you can see the ginkgo trees in the nearby park, waving at you from above rooftops and telephone lines. This is one of the nicer parts of Miyagi. An area not yet bruised by time, given a temporary facelift by its presiding gods.

“Maybe,” Kei allows. He reaches for the boxed curry. “Stop eating the mayonnaise.”

“Why?” Kuroo has finished licking his fingers. He is looking for something new to terrorize.

“It’s disgusting.”

A pause. “You gonna make me stop?”

Kei fills the pot with water and sets it to boil on the stove-top. He washes his hands, peels back the tinfoil on the plastic container inside the box. “No.”

Kuroo presses his hip into the counter. He grins. Tomorrow he's going back to the city for some grad school thing or another. It’s one of a never-ending string of commitments Kuroo has saddled himself with with the utmost delight. He’s not trying to set himself on fire anymore, which is great. Still, Kei wonders sometimes if he doesn’t get tired of being so fiercely present.

“I’m going to eat all your mayonnaise,” Kuroo informs him. Kei drops two cubes of curry in the pot. He reaches for the drawer but Kuroo gets there before him and pulls it open, fishes out the ladle. He hands it to Kei with a flick of his wrist.

What a delicate wrist for someone who once reached for the heavens with the gun-barrel of his soul. Kei marvels for a moment, considers closing his teeth around the soft skin on the heart-side of it.

“Maybe I’ll eat you instead,” he muses, dipping the ladle into the curry. The water’s heated up properly now. Inside the pot the curry cubes have dissolved and the stock is slowly turning opaque, losing the clear ethereal transparency that postmarks their spring-kissed youth.

There’s so much Kei wants to say to him, and so much time for him to do so. He thinks, distantly: this must be what adulthood feels like. The ticker-tape motion of the days, the afternoons folding into the evenings, the way the boy you've loved since you were fifteen stands in your apartment and watches you make dinner. In your mind's eye his fingers twist themselves into your hair and you breathe Jupiter into his lungs. The planets re-align themselves around your hands.

Light pours from the sky like a firework show and sticks to the soles of your feet. It follows you like this, everywhere you go, for the rest of your life.

**Author's Note:**

> a long time ago krtsk was my lifeblood. returning momentarily to offer this. thanks for reading, you're lovely, let me know what you thought, or don't, 's all good. these are trying times. i hope you are hanging tight. take care of yourself and get some sleep
> 
> have a good one


End file.
